Eccentric Flower:199909/Spinning faster spinning slower

So, what should I talk about - real news or cheerful stuff?

Tales of my shopping and salon experiences are frequently bubbly and bouncy, because these are things that boost my self-esteem and make me feel good. But they're not exactly germane to anyone but me. On a grand scale, they're not worth mentioning.

On the other hand, when I read the paper or see the television (or, sometimes, even leave the house) I see real news stories that have a real effect on everyone - and they invariably make me cranky.

So I can be cheerful about the meaningless things or nasty about the significant things. Kind of sad, isn't it?

All right, I admit that not all the real news makes me grumpy, but the kind of happiness it brings me is not usually a good kind - it's more like schadenfreude, and that's not a healthy emotion (despite the fact that I indulge in it so often).

For example, I read about the Dow taking its precipitous 200-point drop and I laughed nastily. Ha! Ha, you people getting rich off those inflated technology stocks, I told you so! When I heard that it was a comment from the evil Steve Ballmer at Microsoft, I chortled even more. When I heard that Ballmer had specifically included Microsoft in his assessment -

"There's such an overvaluation of tech stocks it's absurd, and I'd put our company's stock in that category."

- that was just too much to take. I ran around the house in sheer glee.

I expect Ballmer to be sacked before the week is out. The only person who can really do that is Chairman Bill, who probably lost a chunk of change on that remark. Not that he needs the money, but he's a very insecure man who feels like he always has something to prove, and this will feel like mutiny to him.

But I could be wrong.

I also cheered when the President vetoed the tax cut. Hooray! I love it when he shows occasional glimpses of spine. Look, I am not especially in favor of the Democratic party line or the Republican party line, but I am just socialist enough to think that the money might be better spent on, say, bolstering our limping health, education, and other social programs.

Of course, I don't feel I pay too much in income tax, which automatically divorces me from just about any known party affiliation around ... except maybe the diehard socialists, and I dislike them because they want the government to do too much.

Frankly, I'd rather not have the government provide any social services at all, because I distrust the government and dislike its intervention. However, I know that if it were left up to the private sector to provide these services, it just would not happen. And there is no one else with pockets deep enough.

In short, the government is incompetent, corporate America is heartless, and there is very little else to choose from. A pay-as-you-go plan, where each consumer shoulders her own costs, allows the rich access and denies it to almost everyone else. Of course, that doesn't bother the Republicans, whose basic tenet is: If you're poor, starve.

Or as Tom Toles said some years ago, putting words in Bush Sr's mouth about his health care plan for the poor: "Don't get sick."

I agree with the Republican impulse to protect my own income - and I am afraid I am not a very charitable person. In other words, I understand greed. But I am also not averse to paying taxes to the government so they can help the needy. I would rather not help the needy directly.

I am not against corporations making money. But I no longer believe that Adam Smith's invisible hand works as a tool of regulation ... and sometimes I see things which cry for intervention, like the impossibly high prices we pay for drugs in this country. ("But we need the money for research!" the companies cry. No! Drug companies spend the bulk of their outlay on marketing. European drug companies are being just as innovative, and the prices they can charge are capped by limits in the EU laws.)

And who could intervene in such a case? Why, the government. Which is ineffective, inefficient, and often in the pay of the interests it is supposed to regulate.

It makes me want to cry.

It also makes me want to flinch when I am asked to state my affiliation to a political party. There never seems to be a box for "ban them all and let the candidates go it alone."

Preferably with an ironclad upper limit on all campaign money, one low enough to preclude television advertising.

But I digress.

Sometimes even the smallest of news items annoys me because I worry that it points to bigger problems ahead. And sometimes they just annoy me because the weirdest things set me off.

Bigger problems ahead: There was an article yesterday about the Ryder Cup, and how the American players and the European players hate each other. The Americans hate it because it doesn't pay, and they usually win, and therefore to them it's something of a farce. The Europeans profess to be shocked by the American attitude, where players make their living at the sport and via endorsements - whatever happened, they ask, to love of the game?

The Euros also think that American golf courses are too pampered, too level, too regular - that American golf tames the land instead of learning to deal with the land as it is.

The Euros are also still smarting from an (admittedly rude) move the Americans pulled a few years ago in Europe, where they didn't like the tournament food and sent out for pizza. Pizza, can you imagine?

But these things have a way of getting out of hand. An Italian is quoted in the article as saying "Even the worst European food has to be better than the best American food," which is not true. I was reading in Gourmet just this morning that even some of the three-star French cuisine luminaries are admitting that America is where it's at, that the French classicists are unwilling to let the cuisine evolve or to experiment, and the best French restaurants in New York are at least as good as the best ones in Paris. When a French chef admits that, it's true, because he will be the last to admit it.

The Italian quoted was indulging in a kneejerk response - and that's the problem. Do you know we're engaged in three or four serious trade wars with the European Union? Do you know we are having fights over food labelling, food pricing, beef, bananas, and many other things? Do you know how tense relationships with the EU are right now?

No, I'm not suggesting war. But really, this empty perpetuation of myths - Americans are louts, Europeans are snotty - has got to go. Otherwise it will get a lot worse before it gets better.

Another small one that points to bigger problems ahead: Scientists restored fertility in a post-menopausal woman by reimplanting bits of her own ovaries that had been stored and frozen when she was younger.

Meanwhile, the world's population has gone from five billion to six billion in twelve years. Each billion has taken less time than the one before.

Call me a hothead, but when your body decides it's time to stop making babies, stop. In fact, stop before then.

Of course, most of that billion is not coming from the USA - or any other industrialized nation, for that matter - so it could be argued that if a woman really wants to tax her depleted resources by having a baby after menopause, it's her own problem and will matter very little. After all, you won't be seeing this ovarian replacement arriving in the Third World anytime soon. They have their own problems.

Like living long enough to reach menopause.

Small story that means nothing but sets me off anyway: Boston has decided to ring in the new year at seven p.m. this year. (They're doing it on Greenwich time.) Better for families, they say; this way the kids can enjoy it and so forth.

Many, many newspaper columnists have ranted about this - that New Year's Eve isn't a holiday for kids anyway, and that this just reinforces everybody else's idea that Boston rolls up its sidewalks at sunset (which it does).

Personally, I celebrate the new year by staying inside, as far from bars, drunken humans, and automobiles as possible ... so I don't care.

In fact, I'm not sure whether it's the city's stupidity that annoys me, or the fact that so many columnists have found it important enough to gripe about.

And some stories just make me sad, but for odd reasons. I have no feelings about the earthquake in Taiwan at all - I mean, yes, it was a tragedy, but I don't have friends in Taiwan and it doesn't really resonate with me personally. Hurricane Floyd affected me more than the Taiwan earthquake did. It doesn't mean those people don't have my sympathies; it just means I can't work up much upset over it.

But I am very upset about the fact that NASA apparently committed a huge navigation error and now the Mars Orbiter is just gone - poof - $327 million down the tubes.

Why am I upset? Because I have never stopped insisting on the need for a viable space program, despite the fact that NASA is doing its best to convince everyone that they're not worth throwing any more money at. Another screwup is not what they need. Heck, I wouldn't invest in NASA, not in their current condition ... and furthermore I'm not sure any other effort that's run by a bureaucracy will too any better. Too many cooks, et cetera. It seems like the best hope for the future of space travel is private industry. Too bad I don't trust the corporations either, eh?

And why am I so insistent on space travel? Because I believe it is vital to set up colonies somewhere else. Somewhere as far away as possible. No, not to alleviate the population problem - do the math; we couldn't possibly ship people off-planet fast enough to do that.

No, it's because I feel that human life on Earth is ultimately doomed, and if we want to leave any signs of our existence at all, if we want to have any hope of lasting until the next millennium, we had better start putting some of our eggs in other baskets Real Soon Now.

See? I start out just being annoyed, and from there it's only a few short steps to the complete downfall of humanity.

Look at all these words, will you?

I am not normally an especially angry or depressed person. This journal, as I have said before, is a vent for many of the darker aspects of my personality, and thus by reading this you get a disproportionate picture of me.

But I do have my fits of pique about The State of Things - and with all this information floating around in my head, can you blame me? I mean, this entry is a mile long, and yet it's a tiny slice of the information about World Events floating around in there.

And for once, I can't go along with Kymm's contention that I simply "think too much." In this case, I believe everybody else doesn't think enough. When I have my fits like this - and thank god they always pass quickly - I wonder why everyone else isn't as unhappy about The State of Things as I manage to get.

I mean, aren't you all just a little worried?